The foul, sticky sludge of the swamp had already risen past the girl's calves.
She seemed to have suffered serious injuries.
Every difficult step she took tugged at her wounds, making her face grow ever paler with weakness.
But she paid no heed to any of it.
She gritted her teeth and desperately searched for the source of the flashing lightning, as though clutching at her final lifeline.
Ahead, a vast stretch of the swamp had been completely reduced to scorched earth.
Countless fine, violent bolts of lightning slithered across the cracked ground like spiritual snakes.
Whenever they came into contact with the wet, rotting mud and the air, they erupted in incessant, ear-piercing crackles.
Accompanied by miniature tornadoes, gale winds and thunder intertwined to form heart-pounding violet-blue bolts of lightning.
Two entirely different destructive forces—wind and lightning—were bizarrely intertwined here.
They constantly scoured the void, sketching ancient rune patterns that resembled both lightning and hurricanes. They flickered in and out of sight, mysterious and unfathomable.
At the very center of these strange phenomena, a tall humanoid silhouette stood revealed.
A pale golden radiance, like the glow of the finest amber, emanated from around it, rising and falling deeply in time with its owner's steady breathing.
This mysterious, fantastical sight made the once filthy, dim, deathly swamp instantly shine with brilliance.
It was as though a god recorded in ancient mythological texts had descended upon the world.
The girl stared blankly, utterly transfixed.
A moment later, wild delight burst from her eyes. She rushed forward in desperation.
"Bang!"
A small cluster of violent lightning struck down without warning right before the girl's toes!
A shallow blackened crater exploded open. Scalding clumps of mud splashed onto the girl's face, making her whole body shudder as her steps came to an abrupt